The bank
Every topic, published
This is the whole of it. No account, no email, nothing held back for members — you can read every topic and every option before you pay anything, and decide from that whether the product is asking the right questions.
What is in it
228 topics across 9 dimensions. 205 topics asked everywhere, 18 topics asked in one country, and 5 topics asked in one city. A topic is proposed at the narrowest scope that fits: Chicago votes on the CTA, Stockholm on congestion charging, and everybody votes on homeschooling.
Ten of them are the Core Ten and are asked when you join. Everything else is optional, and “prefer not to say” is a real answer rather than a gap.
Where the bank stands
Children
29 topics- A parent staying home with young childrenFounding bank6 options
- Adoption as a route to parenthoodFounding bank6 options
- Banning phones in schoolsFounding bank6 options
- Boarding schoolFounding bank6 options
- Circumcision of infant boysFounding bank6 options
- Co-sleeping with infantsFounding bank6 options
- Competitive youth sportFounding bank6 options
- Do you want children?Founding bank6 optionsCore Ten
- Free-range parentingFounding bank6 options
- Full-time daycare for under-twosFounding bank6 options
- Gender-neutral parentingFounding bank6 options
- Grammar schoolsFounding bank6 optionsAsked across GB
- Grandparents doing the daily childcareFounding bank6 options
- HomeschoolingFounding bank6 options
- Homework in primary schoolFounding bank6 options
- How would you want to educate your children?Founding bank7 optionsCore Ten
- IVFFounding bank6 options
- Independently run free schoolsFounding bank6 optionsAsked across SE
- Physical discipline of childrenFounding bank6 options
- Posting photos of your children onlineFounding bank6 options
- Private schoolingFounding bank6 options
- Religious education in state schoolsFounding bank6 options
- School vouchersFounding bank6 options
- Screen time for young childrenFounding bank6 options
- Selective-enrolment high schoolsFounding bank6 optionsAsked in us-chi
- Sex education in schoolsFounding bank6 options
- Smartphones for children under 13Founding bank6 options
- Standardised testing in schoolsFounding bank6 options
- SurrogacyFounding bank6 options
How a topic gets in, and out
- A member proposes it. Any verified member whose account is at least 30 days old, one proposal per member per 30 days.
- 50 members second it within 30 days, or it goes no further. That is what keeps the ballot from filling with things nobody but the proposer cares about.
- Members vote, for 30 days. A simple majority of the votes cast adds a topic; retiring one needs 60%, because removing a topic takes away a filter other people are relying on. Either way the ballot has to reach a quorum of 3% of the members eligible at its own scope.
- An editor words it. The editor may not decline a topic members voted for. They decide only how it is asked, and the wording goes back to members for review.
- It enters the bank, with its whole history attached.
A topic existing in the bank is not an endorsement of any answer to it. Answering anything outside the Core Ten is optional, so adding a topic coerces nobody — which is why the bar to add one is deliberately lower than the bar to take one away.
What the bank is not
Nothing topical shipped in it. Not a court case, not a war, not a bill going through a legislature. Those arrive the other way: a member proposes one, members vote it in, and members let it lapse when they are done with it. Anything the company preloads is the company deciding what matters, which is the thing this product exists to stop doing.
The topics that did ship are the ones that have ended relationships for generations — children, faith, money, monogamy, medicine, abortion, and where somebody’s politics sit. They are deliberately few and deliberately durable.